Monday, July 27th 2020
Intel Rocket Lake CPUs Will Bring up to 10% IPC Improvement and 5 GHz Clocks
Intel is struggling with its node development and it looks like next-generation consumer systems are going to be stuck on 14 nm for a bit more. Preparing for that, Intel will finally break free from Skylake-based architectures and launch something new. The replacement for the current Comet Lake generation is set to be called Rocket Lake and today we have obtained some more information about it. Thanks to popular hardware leaker rogame (_rogame), we know a few stuff about Rocket Lake. Starting off, it is known that Rocket Lake features the backport of 10 nm Willow Cove core, called Cypress Cove. That Cypress Cove is supposed to bring only 10% IPC improvements, according to the latest rumors.
With 10% IPC improvement the company will at least offer some more competitive product than it currently does, however, that should be much slower than 10 nm Tiger Lake processors which feature the original Willow Cove design. It shows that backporting of the design doesn't just bring loses of the node benefits like smaller design and less heat, but rather means that only a fraction of the performance can be extracted. Another point that rogame made is that Rocket Lake will run up to 5 GHz in boost, and it will run hot, which is expected.
Source:
_rogame
With 10% IPC improvement the company will at least offer some more competitive product than it currently does, however, that should be much slower than 10 nm Tiger Lake processors which feature the original Willow Cove design. It shows that backporting of the design doesn't just bring loses of the node benefits like smaller design and less heat, but rather means that only a fraction of the performance can be extracted. Another point that rogame made is that Rocket Lake will run up to 5 GHz in boost, and it will run hot, which is expected.
45 Comments on Intel Rocket Lake CPUs Will Bring up to 10% IPC Improvement and 5 GHz Clocks
But approximating IPC on early engineering samples is pointless, since we don't have context and control over the chip's clocks. I suspect this "10% estimate" is derived from that Geekbench score from the other day, a benchmark which is useless even on a good day.
Never forget we're speaking about a 10 times bigger company having some hard times because 5-10 years of lacking competition, emerging security issues and a 5 year saga of strugling 10nm R&D. They will make a comeback. It's inevitable. They just need time to do that. They've past the point of salvability with 10nm, focusing on the next step which may be later than expected, but anoder point worth remembering: Intel's manufacturing processes were always better. That means the just dropped 10nm would be on par with TSMC/Samsung 7nm. Which is the cause the industry is urging to work out a new method of measurement for manufacturing techniques because the "nm" count is no longer a valid measurement of comparison.
Increased TDP makes these pointless.
I am no expert in this area, but what I understand is that Intel's fab tend to be superior to competition in terms of density. So their 14nm for example, could equal that of a 10nm from their competitor for example. But starting with 10nm, I am starting to wonder if that is still the case. What Intel originally planned for 10nm, it was well and good (and aggressive). But because they failed to deliver it for many years, I am pretty sure they had to make compromises to deliver it and appease their investors. My take is that if Intel's 10nm is that great, why is AMD able to deliver and 8 core Renoir with a respectable iGPU, while TIger Lake can only cram in 4 cores with Xe graphics? This is just my speculation. In addition, 10nm yields may have improved, but still unlikely to be as good as their matured 14nm. I feel Intel is certainly not out of the woods with their 10nm issues, thus, we are seeing them dragging their feet when it comes to delivery of 10nm products.
As to 7nm, I will not hold my breathe for it. Its about 2+ to 3 years away and competitors are not sitting there idle. Whether it will be better or not, time will tell. But 1 thing I feel is certain, and that is Intel has lost the fab advantage and likely not going to get it back that soon. Just hope that they don't fall behind on their 7nm further because that will be devastating news for them.Objectively, I feel some people won't be put off by the high TDP. I am just waiting to see if Zen 3 is going to give AMD the boost required in games. Currently, high clockspeed from Intel processors are helping them to retain the gaming crown. But with a lackluster 10% IPC improvement it may not be a big step up from the current highest clocked i7 10700K Coment Lake CPU.
Personally, I feel that while Intel could have done a better job explaining all of that better to the layman, I feel what all that does in the end is let a CPU stretch as much as it has legroom to do so. But with that in mind, it's pretty hard to predict what people will find acceptable and what not.
From the other hand there is a financial crisis in the markets in the past ten years, consumers spending this gradually minimized.
In simple English, the Industry move forwards when past investment at R&D and shareholders has be paid, only then a new cycle will begin.
From the era of quad core Q6600 and later, the vast majority of CPU intense and productive applications has be covered for home use.
For example the people and industry they had the expectation of getting a faster CPU for video editing and or 3D product design software.
New CPU series development and production just for gaming this is not how INTEL thinks or act.
Statistically the spending capacity of a PC gamer this is zero ... the father is the hero and the one paying the bills.
When all households are in crisis, INTEL economists they have awareness that there is no much to expect as growth from them.
And as last, lets not leave out the Microsoft Windows deception (operating system), since Win7 and later the operating system become full of processes running simultaneously with out user control, supposedly these are a new form of software based intelligence, this collecting and recording all day long what the user does in his PC.
Such a poor made concept it does keep the CPU and hard-drives busy even when the PC hypothetically this is idle, since Win7 and later there is no CPU Idle time.
If you keep quad cores busy just for the operating system, then you need another quad cores solely for intense gaming.
In conclusion now that your CPU this has eight cores , you do still consider it as slow.
I have the feeling that game consoles will do better with less required hardware simply because they will not run Windows as operating system.
At stock, Intel's CPUs will throttle to the TDP after 28-56 seconds, unless you disable the power limit. While I'm not a fan of this burst speed, if you're disabling the power limit to do it continuously you're no longer running it at stock, and that's on you. Unfortunately, many reviews do this, which makes these CPUs look terrible in terms of power consumption.
For AMD on the other hand, TDP is only a "guidance", where you can draw a bit more with sufficient cooling.
Anyway, hasn't it been reported that Zen3 has 17% IPC uplift at worst? Also, isn't AMD doubling the cores per CCX? I'm not sure how that translates to performance, but I do know from the Techpowerup review of the 3100 and the 3300x that TPU reported a 12% performance advantage on average for the 3300x because of the 3300x have a single CCX versus two like with the 3100. Additionally, I've also read that we should expect a 200-300Mhz boost in frequencies moving to the upgraded 7nm node. I'm not sure how the math works in this situation (as in I'm not sure if it's as easy as adding those percentages together) , but wouldn't that mean that core for core, we can expect a 25% total performance increase for Zen3 at least?
They might get a bit close to Zen 2, but at which price and power usage ?
And I bet that there will be a black market because of shortage...
We all want more, and expect more... but this isn't a die shrink which brings with it even mkre native improvements. Understand what they are working with (regardless of how they got here).
Sure Intel's reaching high core clock, but at what cost. High temperature and power consumption = expensive cooling solution needed as well.
No so far I am not impressed by Intel's offerings. So far I have my eyes set on AMD's Zen 3.
My point was, while the desktop didn't see much action because of lack of competition, Intel hasn't simply been sitting on their asses cashing in from Core.